The Professor is Stumped!

[Hamfast.8719]

The Professor, an Engineer, was walking around Rata Sum the other day, when he noticed that there was a tiny ball of fire in his right hand! No pain, and no damage... only puzzlement. He ran excitedly back to his lab to run some tests, but upon arriving he discovered that the flame disappears in his Home Instance. Yet POOF!... like magic, it reappears upon leaving. Unable to make use of his facilities, he is now asking the community to shed any light that they can upon this mystery.

 


 

I don't play my Engineer very often, and when I do I usually change things around a bit. I have no idea what I changed to make this happen, but I don't recall seeing this when I last loaded him (at least a month or more ago). Weapon? Skills? Traits? Armor? Or did ANet just add this fairly recently to tell me the state of some setting, like the Elementalist's or Revenant's wrist effects? I would REALLY love to make it go away, for RP's sake, and for taking game screenshots. Or is this strictly a new graphics bug?

[Super Hayes.6890]

Great screenshot btw. The Touch of Madness skin is the only thing I'm aware of that does something like that. No idea what you have going on there. I'll play my engineer later today and see if any equipped skills have new animations.

[Dawdler.8521]

Proof that the master race are left handed. Otherwise he'd burnt a hole through various body parts by now.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

That is the new minor trait Explosive Entrance. You get that glowing thing in your hand whenever you have the icon  in your buff-bar.

 

EE is the first minor trait of the Explosives trait-line. So once you equip Explosives, you get that glowing orb in your hand. It remains there until you attack and returns after you dodge-roll.

[Hamfast.8719]

Excelsior!

 

I might've known someone with a name like **HnRkLnXqZ** would be able to answer a riddle!

 

But now I have another riddle... what in the world does HnRkLnXqZ stand for? My theory:

 

**Helpful, Nice, Really Knowledgeable, Leaving No Xtra Questions: _ZERO!_**

 

(Well... except for the question of your name).

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

The story behind the name is neither glorious nor interesting. Nowadays I laugh about it:

 

I bought GW2 around the official release, a few weeks after. Back in those days a lot of things did not work properly. Some of the Skill Points in the newbie maps, such as Centurion Titus Gearclaw in Plains of Ashford did not work at all. The veterans remember this for sure. And for some weird reasons, the official account-registration also worked ... sometimes.

 

My colleagues at work showed me the game and I was quite eager to try it out myself. Even watched a few videos about the intro mission of the Human race, which really caught my attention with that giant boss at the end. So when I came home from work and the game package was waiting for me on the stairs, I just hasted to my computer. Installed it and registered an account. Well, I tried.

 

No matter what name I entered, account name, the page just did not work. The MMORPG I played before was SWTOR, which had a problem with names that already existed as well. I ran into that problem a lot back then. So after trying for almost an hour, I was quite frustrated to say the least XD. The game was new and all the good names already taken?!? So I pondered upon the most complicated combination of letters I could figure out, also making sure it would not be a keyboard row (e. g. qwertyuiop, asdfghjkl or zxcvbnm), because I knew some people are rather lazy when it comes to names and passwords. I evenutally ended up with hnrklnxqz which looked a little weird. Not knowing how the system truly works, I also wanted to go double-safe and used upper and lower-case letters.

 

So I had it: HnRkLnXqZ - If that does not work, the page is broken!

 

I pressed the button and ... it worked. Turned out I just reached a tiny time-gap where the page worked correctly again. However there was no undo button. A lot later I learned that the account-name is permanent and cannot be changed. If I just had a little patience back then. But I was so motivated to play ... ^^

 

Note: Over the 7+ years I had like < 5 PMs regarding my account-name. I had a couple of guild-member questions about it. And my guildleader once had to explain a member of our guild, that the guildmessage is not written by a bot. Never had an issue with any GM ingame, but I guess the account is on a watch-list. There have been a few opportunities to change the name, but I got used to the name. It also constantly reminds me to have patience and rather double-check a situation before making an important decision.

 

Have a nice day and stay healthy!

[Super Hayes.6890]

Awesome story! Never change that name!